At 9 a.m. on the morning of the Women Founders Summit, my inner voice was loud. Why are you here? You should have gotten your doctorate. Blah, blah, blah.
By noon, I'd heard a panel of founders describe that exact voice, out loud, in front of a room full of strangers. It turns out nearly everyone has one. The difference is what you do with it.
Here's what they said.
When the nos start coming
One founder got vulnerable. Before she started her company, she felt confident. She'd worked at large companies, collected promotions and awards, and honestly thought she could do the job better than the people above her.
Then she became a founder, and the feedback changed. No. Not right now. Let us think about it. Reach out again in six months.
She said it was a blow to her ego, and it did something sneaky. She started believing other people knew her business better than she did. She went looking for coaches and consultants to hand her the easy button, and set aside her own critical and strategic thinking along the way.
Her advice for the next wave of women founders: don't lose the part of you that bets on yourself. You haven't failed yourself before. Don't let the self-talk talk you out of that.
Stop comparing your middle to their highlight reel
She also named the comparison trap. Social media shows you everyone's best day. Your own feed shows you your hardest one.
She admitted that until someone reads her introduction out loud, she forgets she's done anything at all. The day before the summit, she'd felt like a failure.
If that sounds familiar, you're in good company. You're also comparing the wrong things.
Some founders find their confidence the other way
Not everyone's story ran in that direction. Samia Kohler, who moderated the panel, said she was less confident when she worked for other people. She spent years making other companies successful. Once it was her own name on the door, the confidence showed up.
Her advice was the opposite of skipping the hard parts: take everything. Take the no, the ghosting, and the nonsense, and build from all of it. That's what separates the founders who make it from the ones who don't.
Both of them are right. Confidence can crack, and it can be built. Either way, it comes back through action.
Action doesn't need a feeling attached
This was my favorite idea of the day.
One panelist said your action doesn't need an emotion attached to it. It just needs a decision. Will you, five years from now, care that you were tired today? Probably not. So make the call, go to the meeting, send the follow-up anyway.
She pointed out how often the feeling shows up after the action. You dread a client call, then it's the best conversation of your week. You don't want to go to the gym, then 30 minutes in you finally feel like it.
Your emotions will lie to you about what's worth doing. Your calendar won't.
Rest is a strategy, not a reward
The flip side is just as important. One founder spent a year chasing a major health system client. Great first conversation, then silence. She kept following up. They kept opening her emails and saying nothing.
A coach finally told her to stop. For three weeks, do nothing work-related unless a client reached out first. She resisted. She wanted plans A through G.
In those three weeks, three new clients signed. The big one came back, and now they're renewing.
One of her investors takes a full month off every year. Not taking it, that investor told her, costs more than taking it. The founder now builds in a four-day weekend at least every eight weeks.
You don't need permission to rest. You need a plan for it.
Build a circle that tells the truth
The last theme was about who you keep close. The founder who felt like a failure said what saves her is a personal board of directors: advisors and friends who remind her what she's capable of when she forgets.
Another panelist said she moved from Scottsdale to Phoenix partly because she was tired of everyone saying everything was lovely. Her advice: tell people the truth about how it's going. The right women will show up with an introduction, a lead, or a reminder that you've done hard things before.
That's what the room in Tempe was. Nobody pretending.
What I'm taking from it
My 9 a.m. voice didn't disappear because someone told me to ignore it. It quieted because I sat in a room full of women saying the same things out loud and kept going anyway.
So this week, try three things. Do one task you've been waiting to feel ready for. Put a real day off on the calendar. And tell one person in your circle how it's actually going.
Next in the series: finding your voice after years of being someone else's. For every marketer who sounds great for clients and freezes when it's time to talk about themselves.
If you want a sharp, honest partner to help you show up with confidence, The Cheeky Rooster is here for it.